tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post115507266884152872..comments2015-03-02T08:15:11.963-05:00Comments on In the Middle: Time Is But the Stream I Go A-Fishing InJeffrey Cohenhttps://plus.google.com/110433684739546897626noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-44362203867442668332007-02-24T23:19:00.000-05:002007-02-24T23:19:00.000-05:00My avatar should be representative of the Langolie...My avatar should be representative of the Langolier Model.......langolierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02624480499852781969noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1155174835721716962006-08-09T21:53:00.000-04:002006-08-09T21:53:00.000-04:00I too enjoyed Gilbert's book. I read it right aft...I too enjoyed Gilbert's book. I read it right after Phillips's <I>Going Sane: Maps of Happiness</I>. If you haven't read Phillips on happiness, you should...he's a wonderful opponent of "happiness studies" (a la Seligman).<BR/><BR/>Medieval Happiness. The Happy Middle Ages. Future Sessions?<BR/><BR/>My own sense is that the media is digging the happiness component--they can understand it and, perhaps most importantly, we seem to be historically situated for another Bobby Mcferrin "Don't Worry, Be Happy" moment--and no one much cares about the "drudge" work that is being in psychology and ethics on the virtues more generally. This latter shit fascinates me not least because it links back the post-WWII thinkers I value most, e.g., Carl Rogers, Maslow, Goodman, Mills, Mumford, Marcuse, Alinsky, May, Fromm, and the ever-radiantly smart Ricketts.<BR/><BR/>I am devoting the next year, maybe two, to putting some of this down on paper and out in words. It was after a recent reread of Lacan's 7th Seminar that I decided to do this. Go figure.emile blauchenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1155133643028903242006-08-09T10:27:00.000-04:002006-08-09T10:27:00.000-04:00First of all, I am neither better looking nor smar...First of all, I am neither better looking nor smarter than JJC. Since I have not yet met him in person, I know this to be absolutely true. As to the how seriously other Anglo-Saxonists might take some of my ideas--well, likely not at all. And that's why I stay in that tribe, even though they're always trying to shove me into the forest with rations and a compass. I go exploring and then come right back. Why? Because I love the company of philologist curmudgeons! I can't get enough of them! [And please note that one reason I make a point of never blogging anonymously is . . . no one scares me. It's important, I think, to somehow work on eliminating the "intimidation factor" and elitism--institutional and otherwise--that is so much a part of our "business," and that is why one of my eternal mottoes is Simone Weil's statement, "I will consider termination to be the culmination of my career."]<BR/><BR/>All kidding aside [and "not so kidding"] aside, I have also read Brian Green--The Elegant Universe--and my tiny brain was also overwhelmed. In fact, with Julian Barbour, I can only read parts of his book, not all of it. And thanks, JJC, for tip on Daniel Gilbert--I had not known of him. After perusing reviews of the book, it sounds like something Emile B. would also like, since his main argument is that "happiness," as well as other human emotions, can be studied scientifically. If we lived in the present more, maybe we wouldn't be ungrateful temporal progeny in the future? But perhaps the way in which our brains are wired make it very difficult to *be* in the present, 100%? I've often been torn between the idea that we're either only ever in the present [Barbour's Platonia] and we simply create past & future as useful constructs for putting "motion" & "direction" into our lives, or that, conversely, we're always in the transition between past and future--i.e., a transitive temporal space that is always in flux between thinking backwads while also thinking forward [I guess this brings us back to "being" versus "becoming"].<BR/><BR/>As far as medieval studies is concerned, I simply want to embrace any kind of re-thinking of temporality that gets us out of the hermeneutic of only being able to think about history as some kind of teleological "chain" of events. Also, I sometimes despair over all the ways in which we want to say that medieval persons and medieval life/culture were completely "alter" to us "moderns." In the grand scheme of world history, don't people realize what a SHORT span of time 1,000 years [or 700 or 800 years] actually is? As a regular reviewer of articles on Old English poetry for "The Year's Work on Old English Studies," I can't believe how many essays I have to read written by OE scholars who want to "prove" that we "do damage" to our understanding of Old English poetry when we "ignore philology" in favor of pressing our "contemporary" concerns with sex, race, gender, whathaveyou upon our translations. Because, um, you know, in Anglo-Saxon England, they didn't have sex, or if they did, they didn't think about it. Yeah, that's it. Uh-huh.Eileen Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03205471011527344127noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1155085865869877712006-08-08T21:11:00.000-04:002006-08-08T21:11:00.000-04:00Great stuff! Clearly Professor Joy and I were sepa...Great stuff! Clearly Professor Joy and I were separated at birth: she was the smarter twin. (I would also add "better looking" but since we have never occupied the same or even a proximate timespace I can't say that).<BR/><BR/>It's too bad (though not at all surprising) that the MLA proposal didn't fly. It would have been very interesting to see how that session came together, and how many Anglo-Saxonists would take it seriously.<BR/><BR/>Another science-y book on time that I'm fond of is Brian Greene, <EM>The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality </EM>. Greene is a physicist who attempts to make string theory, spacetime, relativity and all those tough to imagine phenomena comprehesible to those of us who prefer words and pictures over mathematical equations. The diagrams and metaphors crazily proliferate; sometimes it is fun, and sometimes my tiny brain comes very close to exploding. There's a great chapter called "The Frozen River: Does Time Flow?" and it's followed by another, "Chance and the Arrow: Does Time Have a Direction?"<BR/><BR/>I've also just finished reading a popular book written by a well regarded cognitive psychologist, <A HREF="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/gilbert.html" REL="nofollow">Daniel Gilbert's </A><EM>Stumbling on Happiness</EM>. Gilbert does a superb and hilarious job of detailing why the human procilivity to spatialize time gets us into so much trouble. He's also got much to say about how the only futures we seem capable of imagining are infinite extensions of the present, and he does a great read of our future selves as ungrateful temporal progeny. My favorite poolside book of the summer.J J Cohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com